Protesters disrupt virus vaccination site in LA

Los Angeles: Protesters disrupted a coronavirus vaccination distribution centre at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, US media reported on Sunday.

Several dozen people carrying signs demanding the end of lockdowns and promoting anti-vaccination conspiracy theories gathered at the entrance to the site, one of the largest in the US, social media posts showed.

"There appears to be only about 30 protestors total. It’s not clear why they’ve shut off the whole facility," tweeted social media user Mikel Jollet. Officials shut the site down for nearly an hour, US media reported, citing fire department officials -- though the Los Angeles police department later insisted that the site had not been shut down and that all the vaccines would be distributed.

The incident represents just the latest challenge to the vaccine rollout in the US, which has the highest number of cases and deaths in the world from Covid-19. More than 26 million people have been infected and 439,000 have died in the country since the start of the pandemic, a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University showed Satuday.

President Joe Biden has pledged to have 100 million people vaccinated within his first 100 days -- but the rollout began slowly under former President Donald Trump. Los Angeles county, where Covid-19 cases have surged this winter, is currently only vaccinating frontline medical workers and people aged 65 and over.

Even among those groups, appointments are extremely difficult to obtain, with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots in limited supply.Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron has gambled by not imposing a third national lockdown to contain Covid-19 -- against expectations and the advice of his most senior scientific advisers.

The 43-year-old leader opted to tighten existing restrictions on travel and shopping at a cabinet meeting on Friday after a week in which his government appeared to be preparing the public for new stay-at-home orders.

The move keeps France on a different path to its biggest neighbours Britain and Germany at a time when the more contagious UK variant of the disease is spreading rapidly across Europe. "Everything suggests that a new wave could occur because of the variant, but perhaps we can avoid it thanks to the measures that we decided early and that the French people are respecting," Health Minister Olivier Veran told the Journal du Dimanche (JDD) newspaper on Sunday.

He said that, unlike in other countries, the number of new coronavirus cases had barely increased last week, while other indicators -- such as traces of the virus detected in waste water -- were also reassuring.

The French government put in place a strict night-time curfew after a second lockdown ended in December, while deaths of around 250 a day are currently less than a quarter of the number in Britain or Germany.

Macron was reported to have been concerned about the impact of another lockdown on a country struggling with the mental health consequences of nearly a year of restrictions, as well as a deep recession.

But by going against the instincts of health minister Veran and others on his coronavirus scientific council, Macron is taking personal responsibility for a decision with potential to backfire.

"Why Macron Said No" read the front-page headline of the JDD, making it clear who should be credited -- or blamed -- in the future.

Many experts, citing studies since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, argue that early lockdowns are the most effective because they tend to be shorter and reduce the overall economic damage.

"The situation is serious, but we think that we have the means to beat what’s going to happen. It’s worth a try," an unnamed presidential adviser told Le Monde newspaper. Another made clear to the same newspaper that another lockdown had not been ruled out, meaning a change in approach was possible.

"If, in the coming days, we witness an incredible increase in the epidemic, then we’ll act," the adviser said. In a related development, police in the Belgian capital said on Sunday they have detained scores of people in a bid to prevent two banned demonstrations against measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus. "We are above 200 arrested at the moment," mainly around the rail stations in Brussels, a police spokesman said around midday.

Meantime, a team of WHO experts investigating the origins of Covid-19 on Sunday went to a market in Wuhan where one of the first reported clusters of infections emerged over a year ago, with one member tweeting the visit was "critical" to understanding the virus.